It has been proposed to equip the front of vehicles with devices for protecting a pedestrian if the vehicle and the pedestrian collide. Some vehicles have vehicle collision detection systems with sensors mounted in the forward portion of the vehicle. However, while such arrangements may be satisfactory for vehicle collisions with ‘hard’ objects such as other vehicles, trees, and concrete structures, the arrangement may have insufficient or improper sensitivity, and/or an undesirable time delay to be used to detect a collision with a pedestrian and to properly and timely activate the pedestrian protection devices. Furthermore, signals from the sensors need to be analyzed to distinguish collisions with pedestrians from collisions with hard object as described above, and with objects smaller than pedestrians such as birds, so that pedestrian protection devices are not inappropriately deployed.